


The USS Hera’s Soap Opera

by Anonymous



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, MLM/WLW Hostility, Post-Canon, other characters referenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29732322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A very nice and calm discussion on the USS Urania between one Captain Isabel Lovelace and Daniel Jacobi.
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi & Isabel Lovelace
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8
Collections: Anonymous





	The USS Hera’s Soap Opera

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for: referenced abuse/unhealthy relationships of an unspecified kind (kepler), passive suicidality, canonical character deaths, allusions to alcohol abuse, & an unreliable narrator with unclear shifts between memory and the situation at hand. despite the title this isn’t much of a funny one lads
> 
> anyway hi i’m thinking a lot about daniel jacobi. sorry for the gratuitous dog metaphors and jokes. i make no promises of this being accurate or palatable in any sense

There’s a ghost’s hand on the back of his neck and he is having a screaming match with one Captain Isabel Lovelace.

Because Captain Isabel Lovelace has a different opinion on how exactly the performance piece of the Finale of Goddard Futuristics will play out, and Hera turned off the functions of the coffee machine on their thirtieth straight hour awake. And his shoulders ache with remembered pain, and with real pain, because his body is like a charred chicken nugget left in the microwave too long. And she slipped up a half-hour ago and called him Sam, and he is just hurt enough to reach the point where he wants everything to hurt with him, so he said something about the discarded belongings of one Officer Samuel Lambert, deceased, and now they are an ignition and a fuel source approaching ground zero at speed.

There is a hand on the back of his neck.

“-like a dog!”

And there it is. The hand tightens its grip.

“Captain.”

“No!” She is tugging away at what’s left of her hair, cut violently close to her head in a ramshackle hack with a bald patch the shape of a dime on one side, a match to Jacobi’s, a match to Minkowski’s, a matching quartet with one dear amnesiac. “You know I’m right! We both know that the second we hit dirt, you are going to go find some ditch to drink yourself to death in, and you think that we’re going to fucking thank you for it.”

His hands are not shaking. He was trained better than to shake. “I ever-so-much _do_ _not_ know what you mean, Captain!”

“You are so- how do you not _understand_ this?” 

The Captain _is_ shaking. She has not had that trained out of her, which is easy to forget when she gets so close to the kind of person that the SI-5 requires, toes that line but never crosses, and all he can think of is that hand. The hand on his neck. Broad and cold.

“There’s nothing to understand, as far as I can see!”

“Do not sit here and try to- to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! You’re running around here with a death wish and about a dozen complexes and- And. We all saw how he looked at you. How he treated you. That’s not- you _flinch_ , Jacobi!”

Because it had gone from Officer Samuel Lambert to Doctor Alana Maxwell and then into every weakness the other could think of, a verbal knife fight that the two of them decided to bring assault rifles to. Addictions and sins and crimes and characters flaws, and and and. And then, this.

“I know _exactly_ how all of you see me, Captain. How everyone sees it. Saw it. Sees _me_. Poor Jacobi, chasing his own tail. Crazy Jacobi, throwing himself at anything that could kill him on impact just to see what _happens._ All it takes is some praise and some booze and you’ve got yourself a man that will follow you to hell! What, you think this is news? Hottest take of the year, everyone: Daniel Jacobi is a dog off his leash! Careful, Captain,” he adds, gnashing his teeth at her like there’s flesh caught in them, “I’ve heard he bites.”

“God, get _over_ yourself! You’re not some fucking weapon, you’re a

“-person, Daniel. If you’re going to drink yourself into a stupor over the man who tells you when to roll over, at least- At least do it with me. Okay? At least do it here. I’m not going anywhere, Daniel, I’m not

“I refuse to follow these fucking patterns with you!“

He finds himself saying, “It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it?”

Captain Lovelace has half-exited anger back into that tired fugue state everyone aboard the Urania has been inhabiting for the past week, and he is trying so hard to keep that fire burning in his own chest because the smoke fills him up more than any tissue that lived in there before. 

“You can throw yourself at this brick wall all you goddamn want, Jacobi. I will give as good as I get if you continue to feel the _fucking_ urge to make everyone in a mile radius hurt as bad as you are. But I will not sit here and let you continue a

“-pattern of behavior, when created, is hard to crack,” says Alana. She punctuates the last of that with the sound of her laptop snapping shut. Her smile is a faded photograph.

“Okay? I am not going to be your new Kepler. I’m also not going to let you _sit_ _here_ and wallow and wait to go out in a blaze of self-loathing glory. You are a goddamn person, and you are not going to give up on putting in the work here. You are going to own up to your shit and _move_ _on_.”

“I don’t- I don’t know what you want from me, Captain.”

“You-“ She takes a deep breath. Then another. Attempts to rub away a tension headache she is clearly developing behind her eyes. He refuses to look her in the eye. He doesn’t want to see pity. “Start with this. Apologize.”

The hand loosens. He hadn’t even realized it had begun to choke him. He heaves in a gaping breath. He wants so badly to be angry. He has been awake for forty-one hours. “What.”

“Apologize to me.”

“I won’t mean it.”

“Of course you won’t mean it. Do it anyway.”

“Make me.”

“ _Jacobi_ ,” she says in a tone of voice that matches the hand the collar the leash on his throat and on instinct he

“I’m- I’m sorry.”

“Again.”

“Why.”

“ _Again_.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Again.”

“I’m... I’m sorry.”

“Again.”

He is not shaking.

“I’m sorry.“

And a change in script: “I am too.”

“What are _you_ even apologizing for.”

“Calling you an underbred mutt someone dug out from underneath a hillbilly’s covered porch.”

He barks out a laugh at the shock of it. It’s not without humor. It’s not without the coughing of embers of that fire he cannot keep burning. “No it’s- That was.”

“Funny?” Hera suggests in the tone of voice used by someone who’s just grabbed enough popcorn for the entire peanut gallery. 

“Ha ha,” he monotones.

“And?”

“And what, Captain.”

“ _And_ what are you sorry for, Daniel?”

Alana is turned away from him in the backseat of the car, Kepler somewhere in the desert outside burying the body. The sun shines and he can’t see her face. She is saying something about the best way to remove blood from leather seats.

“Fuck you, Lovelace.”

“Well,” says Lovelace. “That’s a start. Fuck you too, Jacobi.”

The hand clenches, loosens, and lets go. He breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m not sure if it’s clear enough but lovelace is not jacobi’s therapist and it’s not her job to fix him or do the emotional labor of getting his shit together for him. but she also recognizes from her own experience (“i am going to be isabel lovelace” etc) that sometimes you need a push from someone to make you deal with your issues. she’s not going to enable him, and she’s also not going to let him goad her into recreating the patterns he’s comfortable with. 
> 
> when you leave an abusive situation you can genuinely miss the false stability of it, and attempt to recreate that in future relationships. jacobi even subconsciously is trying to “test the rules” for the situation with those in authority positions by pushing his luck and seeing what the results are.
> 
> also, again like. i have a lot of thoughts about jacobi and i love him, but he still did a lot of bad things and to reach a point where he’s “redeemed” beyond briefly becoming a “good guy” he needs to shape up and put the work in. it’s unmentioned for obvious reasons but after they touch back onto earth he joins local anarchist mutual aid programs and helps fund their needs with that sweet sweet goddard money. he also forms a set of assistance programs for at-risk individuals called named after alana in the most tacky way he can think of. he knows it would piss her off and make her happy in the same breath. he buys the rights to a really ugly little creek in the middle of nowhere and names it Warren
> 
> anyways that’s all from me in this long winded essay i can barely call an end note. happy purim


End file.
